The more I say TOP, the higher prices go. You guys should be grateful. Look at that ratty spider on BAT. I make some derogatory comments about the top operation and paint and the bidjumps $5k. And did you see the center console? Discussing! (That should drive the bid to 75 or 80.) Image Unavailable, Please Login
Yeah I always suspected shill bidders on BAT. I know shill bidders were standard practice at live auctions in lanes with everyday cars. On BAT the bidder doesn’t have much skin in the game. Heck, the bidder can easily just not close the deal with very little ramifications. BAT clearly states it’s a transaction between buyer and seller and doesn’t get involved post auction.
Automatically charges your CC for buyers fee. I think you would lose that….. even if you tried to dispute charges. BaT has record of bids and agreement (TOS) you electronically sign. But I agree with your sentiments and I too am concerned if they actually close. People can negotiate after sale if they go see and find misrepresented. ?? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Not sure how often it happens, but if I’m a seller and don’t think the car was misrepresented or the winner decided to do some last min negotiations and we’re off by a good amount, I would think I have the obligation to report the buyer. BAT reviews, bans buyer from future auctions and takes his $5k.
BAT is way understaffed and is really hands off. Read some of the negative reviews. I found that out the hard way.
Not much BAT can do. They can’t force a transaction. Bidders must submit CC info and agree to have your card charged. Only recourse they have is to ban bidder and charge him $5k. I would imagine if the issue becomes rampant, they could increase the buyer fee. @duskybird had auctioned his manual F430 on BAT with a winning bid of $241k. Buyer didn’t come through. https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2006-ferrari-f430-berlinetta-9/ His car was then relisted again not long after. Winning bid was $209k https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2006-ferrari-f430-berlinetta-9-2/ A hit manual F430 just got $245k. We’ll have to see if it shows up on BAT again. https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2009-ferrari-f430-4/
See, as soon as comment the bid increases. No, this is what you got, well what I got, for considerably under $60k, with a 0 mile fresh major and complete new head work. If you are buying a car to keep and enjoy, it really doesn't matter what it cost if it's what you want. But, if you buying it to flip or as an investment, I just don't see this as the time to buy. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Another beauty for our RHD folks: Image Unavailable, Please Login 1996 Berlinetta 43k Miles Grigio Titanium on Nero Carbon Seats Fresh engine out 85,000 GBP // $118,000 USD https://www.pistonheads.com/buy/listing/11882010 Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
The bidder has quite a bit of skin in the game. When you place a bid on BaT, you are immediately charged 5% on your credit card that you must have on file with BaT. So on an 80k car, $4K. If you do not follow through on winning the car, meaning close the deal, you lose your 5%, and are blocked from further auctions on BaT. Also, if the winning bidder does not follow through, the guy second in the bidding is (often) offered the car. Mostly I think the bidders on BaT are serious. I have sold a Mercedes there(560SL), and you could see some of the losing bidders from past 560SL auctions coming back to bid on mine. Guys who had been commenting, and bidding, for months, etc. The difficult thing is knowing about the recent signups to BaT. Is this a guy who heard about his dream car on some website he did not know about? Or someone with sketchy intentions? About your idea of shill bidders. I was a bidder on a Ducati. I did not win the auction, but I was second. BaT contacted me and offered me a chance to close the deal with the seller, at my bid price, and without the BaT commission-I think very fair to buyer and seller. But when I reviewed the other guys who bid, I noticed a pattern that a lot of them were brand new to BaT. It gave me a bad feeling that these might be shill bidders and I decided, for mostly that reason, not to buy the bike. On BaT, if you are interested to see a users bidding and commenting history, you can click on their username in the auction and see. I think if you click on some of the usernames in this auction, you will see that the first and last bike they ever bid on was this auction. https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2008-ducati-1098s-3/ Setting up shill bidders, it would seem to be playing with fire. There is a chance your shill (you?) will wind up owing some thousands of dollars on your credit card, and you still will not sell your car. I have to say that I am a very big fan of BaT. I had a very good experience with my one and only sale there. And I have bid on a number of cars and bikes, and felt most auctions were very fair.
Shills can certainly run cars to reserve without fear of being charged. And I promise if I bid on a BAT car and had an issue with it or just changed my mind, Amex would yank the funds from them in an instant, particularly with an online transaction. And even if they blocked a user ID what’s preventing that person from creating another and bidding on other stuff? It’s not the infallible, and more importantly the perfectly transparent bid platform some make it out to be.
Yup, not sure who said BaT was infallible or perfectly transparent. I agree with you, and gave an example of just such a problem. But I don’t think you have ever placed a bid on BaT. As you place your bid, you can will get a notification that your Amex has a charge pending. And if you win the auction, that charge will go through. So I don’t understand why you say there is no fear of being charged. The charge to your card is virtually instantaneous with your bid. Sure you/one can dispute the charge. I don’t normally create financial obligations in the tens of thousands, and then reneg, because I changed my mind, so I have no experience with making such a call to the people at Amex, and that it is so easy, as you say, to reverse. You can create a new username, but as I said, if a bunch of people are bidding that have no history on BaT, it does decrease trust in that particular auction. Or if you are a seller with no history, people will have less trust. Ultimately, it is a system with an element of trust, which increases if the people involved, seller/bidders/commenters, have a history on BaT.
I would imagine they are keeping your CC info on file which has your name and address and if that info pulled up again with another username it would signal a red flag. But of course, you can always use your friends and family until you run out. I think it has been discussed elsewhere here, there are shill bidders in virtually all auction houses. And if there’s shill bidding, you have to assume it is happening all across the board… not just F355’s. If shill bidding is done up to reserve, which has been reported to be relatively low on BAT, I’m not sure if that is the end of the world. Serious bidders have a number in mind they are willing to pay for a car. Doesn’t really matter what is going on in between. One could argue shill bidding is efficient at realizing what the top bidder’s max amount he’s willing to pay for the car, which is what most sellers are trying to do anyways when selling a car privately. Start high and work from there. *Good point regarding retracting the buyer fee with credit card company. I’m gonna call my CC company and found out what can be done about it because the car I won did have some misrepresentations. *Also good to know BAT offered no buyer fee to second bidder.
Here’s the thread. https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/shill-bidding-on-bring-a-trailer.631616/
Clearly there are bidders on BAT with some serious disposable income. When you look at their bidding history and auctions won, plus some of the questions they ask, you can clearly see how they spend ( or waste their money). You can also see where their ego and “need to win” takes over in an emotionally irrational state. I love this F Chat forum as it’s a true think tank. Some of these guys gobbling up assets of all type are by no means knowledgeable or astute. But then again they have way more money than me, LOL so who am I to judge.
Auction Fever is a real thing. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120907-why-we-overpay-at-auctions
As mentioned a few pages back, a decade ago I offered a seller $73k for his 15k mi Red/black GTS although his public asking price was $69k. I truely felt at that price, seller was getting a ton of calls and he wasn’t really getting back to me. I went with my gut and just decided to offer him more than his ask just to get his attention. He never asked for higher than his ask. He never got back to me. When you look for a car for so long and finally find the one you want, there’s this sense of desperation that you have to win it or you’ll be cursed into looking for it for another 2-3 years. So “overpaying” can certainly happen in private sales as well. What matters most is if I’m happy come time to write that check.
Wait did I just click on the BAT feedback thread? This whole line of discussion sounds like a good thread topic actually. Ok back to speculating of 355 values.
I’ve purchased on both BAT and PCar. I’ve also bid on cars and pay attention to who else is bidding, when they signed up, what else they bid on, etc etc. Regardless of their cc to bid obligation their system is fallible. In any event, back to hyping up (I mean speculating) on 355 values.
… brings up another interesting thought. If one is looking to actually win a car on BAT for himself, would it best to come off as a shill bidder? Sign up a few days before, appear completely anonymous. No comment or bidding history. Come in aggressive and cast doubt amongst other bidders? I know I signed up a few days before my auction. Perhaps I came off as a shill bidder .
Magnesium wheels. Fix curb rash for 100-200... if you mean hit it with a sort of close rattle can from Checker auto on top of bondo, sure. There is another point to having one of these cars with wheels in that shape I wont bother to mention. But hey, I am all in favor of that car hitting $125K make no mistake about that.
